Posts Tagged ‘June 11th Solidarity’

By now it is a platitude to speak of the isolation and silence that prisons strive to impose. Every week another one of our imprisoned friends tells us that their mail is getting fucked with, the phones on their unit are “broken,” or that our publications are being rejected with no recourse.

For us, one of the most exciting elements of June 11, 2016 was the proliferation of words and ideas shared between and from anarchist prisoners. Along with spreading material solidarity internationally and keeping the names of our comrades on our lips, our contribution to facilitating that communication is one of our most important tasks. While the starting point of our project was support for Marius Mason and Eric McDavid (the first of whom remains imprisoned in an extremely restrictive unit, while the latter has been freed!), it has been through a spreading web of communications that we have expanded the scope of our project to solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners around the world. This year, we are seeking to emphasize this communication.

Maintaining communication is a lifeline for those caught in the snares of state repression or locked in its dungeons. Prisons function to isolate those held within these dungeons, to remove them from human community, and to break their will. Receiving letters and publications, being able to connect with individuals outside of the walls, and being able to call upon the solidarity of comrades on the outside are all vitally important to retaining dignity in dehumanizing conditions. When Chelsea Manning attempted suicide, communication enabled her and those close to her to mobilize and act. For prisoners who seem to live under a microscope due to their rebellious activities, a constant stream of letters shows their tormentors that they have friends on the outside and that there will be consequences for any action taken against them. Throughout the September 9th US prison strike, the relationships built over years made it possible to know of work strikes and rebellions happening in prisons all over the country, allowing supporters to organize counter-repressive action.(more…)

During and after the “social movement”, we’ll never stop following our destructive passions, pursuing our dreams of freedom, sowing the chaos of revolt in the order of authority.“Tout peut basculer”; anarchist newspaper published in Paris

In the early hours of June 9th 2016, we paid a brief visit to the offices of the French insurance company AXA in the centre of Athens and torched one of their vans. We ruled out the possibility of attacking the building with the means that are currently at our disposal, for the simple reason that we wouldn’t have caused considerable damage beyond broken windows and perhaps a small fire. Nevertheless, their vehicle that was parked every night next to their offices gave us a good opportunity to attack them quickly and discreetly.

We attacked a target that’s located in an area where, in addition to patrols, cops are constantly present; we were also aware that the surrounding cafeterias and sex shops are frequented by cops with or without uniform. But it only takes a good preparation to strike every potential target.

We chose to attack AXA as a minimum display of complicity with rebels in France, who are fighting in the streets for more than three months. We make it clear, however, that this is not an act of solidarity with “social movements” or the leftists who ask for law reforms, more democracy and a “fairer” Power; nor with the unions that try to manipulate the revolt to satisfy their own interest; nor with “the poor people” or “the working class” who complain now that the legislation affects their pockets and want the State to guarantee them a return to normalcy and a welfare regime. A normalcy and welfare built on the obedience and servitude of the consumerist mass. (more…)

Here is a short run-down of events and actions that occurred in Bloomington related to the June 11th international day of solidarity with Marius Mason and all long-term anarchist prisoners:

– A benefit in late May raised over $350 for anarchist prisoners.
– A benefit dance party in late May raised over $600 for queer and trans prisoners, including anarchist comrade Michael Kimble.
– A ‘packathon’ event put together packages of books for prisoners.
– A letter writing night signed and mailed cards and letters to over 20 anarchist prisoners in the USA, Chile, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and Russia.
Individuals’ translation skills enabled these to be written in the languages understood by comrades outside of the US.
– An informational night presented on the cases and current situations of over two dozen anarchist prisoners around the world.
– A movie showing of G.A.R.I., about an action group who held a banker hostage, demanding freedom for anarchists held captive in Franco’s prisons.
– A microphone demonstration and picnic. We played recorded texts written by anarchist prisoners, which were amplified. For three hours, the center of town echoed with the words of our imprisoned comrades. Afterwards, hundreds of flyers about Marius Mason were scattered around downtown.
– On the night of June 11th, anonymous individuals smashed out the windows of the probation office.
– A walk in Yellowwood State Forest in honor of Marius Mason. Years ago, Marius had spiked trees in that exact forest, in defense of wild spaces in Indiana.
– At most of these events, we set up a large table of informational handbills, zines of prisoners’ writings, posters, and prisoner addresses.

We are approaching the struggle against prison and the state with a basic proposal: that of polymorphous struggle.

We refuse any hierarchy of tactics, seeing each initiative as a tool which contributes to a diverse struggle. Fundraising, sending literature to prisoners, writing letters, spreading information about the struggles of our comrades, public demonstrations, attacking the state – all help create a space from which individuals can fight in whatever way is desirable to them or makes sense in their circumstances. We absolutely reject both the handwringing weakness that says that to act combatively for our comrades is dangerous, and the posturing militancy that finds no value in anything but “hard” actions. For us, everything that contributes to strengthening our comrades in prison and our shared struggle against the state is essential.

Anyone can contribute to this tapestry of struggle. All it takes is to be decided.

We send greetings to all imprisoned and fugitive comrades around the world.

Solidarity towards all prisoners, political and penal, without any division, who with their stance and their ideals dream of a fair way of dealing with the general good. Besides, the course of each person, their acts as well their stance over the years carves their personality too.

We must give a huge hug to people-fellow prisoners of ours who really need it without waiting for anything in return. In my opinion we must rely on the feeling of unity between those of us who are connected by common interests and common targets.

All we prisoners are connected with one another with a different judgement of real incidents.

And even in the most tough times where we are persecuted by our enemies for our ideas and courage, we must stand tall and give our thoughts and help to all those who need it. (more…)

On the night of June 11th, as a small gesture, we smashed out the windows of the probation office.

The police, courts, and prisons constitute a web of control that seeks to crush human beings, forcing conformity to a social order of hierarchy and exploitation.

While this manifests itself as police murders and the brutalization of prisoners, more and more it takes the role of diffuse repression via systems of home detention, work release, parole, and probation. In each of these systems of self-policing, the ability of collective resistance shrinks to none, isolating those rebels who will not submit to these forms of soft imprisonment.

We can no longer accept the role of judicial power in our lives. We do not care if this takes the form of police cars on our streets, prison walls separating us from our friends, ankle monitors, or daily check ins. It all must go. We attack the system that floods into our lives as a reminder that its sprawl should not be normalized. As forms of repression grow beyond the prison walls it should be met with consistent attacks.

Each act of revolt opens up space for joy in our lives, space to breathe freely.
Against the asphyxiation of prison society, we choose rebellion.

Total complicity with all those in revolt against prison and the state in all their forms.

June 11th is an international solidarity day. A day against oblivion. A day for all those who are missing from the streets.

For everyone of us that learned to count our steps within the prison yard and divide our day between locking after locking and our night in tallies.

At the same time, June 11th is a day of war. It’s a day of rebellion because law and order may rule but they do not reign.
The existence of anarchist prisoners reminds us of the existence of the anarchist war. A war that sometimes burns slowly and sometimes blinds the sky with its fires.

Every war has its losses. There are comrades that were lost to cop’s bullets or from a bomb that “was in a hurry” to explode…

Comrades that will not be beside us in the next conspiratorial rendzevous.
And then there are those who got caught in the enemy’s snare. An enemy that is baptized in democracy and takes revenge with prisons and courts.

A democracy that likes to carry its captives as trophies from prison to prison, in special conditions, charged with dozens of years of punishment… (more…)

A greeting for the international day of solidarity and action for the anarchist prisoners throughout the world

An international day when all prisoners from all corners of the earth, all those who are experiencing the obligatory status of incarceration in the penal prison camps of democracy, those who are being deprived of the most valuable good of freedom, are uniting their voices, their thoughts and feelings, in order to send a signal among them that no one is alone.

Despite the hundreds of kilometers that are separating us, despite that we don’t know each other, despite of all our differences, there is something that surpasses borders and achieves the elimination of all distances, something that can’t be imprisoned, that escapes out of the walls that loom up around us, something that is priceless within the hearts of those who feel it, express it, or receive it. (more…)

“For June 11th, international day of solidarity and action for the anarchist prisoners throughout the world”

Prison has the terrifying ability to leave its own indelible imprints on the bodies and minds of its residents.

Imprints of sorrow, frustration, violence, asphyxia, enforcement. Doors that keep locking and unlocking everyday at the same time with exactly the same awful sound in a monotonous rhythm of a murderous routine that drips its poison of immobility and vanity slowly and painfully.

A brief description about the distillation of sepsis that is being produced by incarceration is enough to become understandable of the hate we feel towards prisons.

That’s why every time a prison break succeeds, every time that a penal officer is being paid an uninvited visit, every time that a prison director or police sergeant pays the price of his despicable choices, our hearts fill with a unique feeling of enjoyment and pleasure. Because revenge for the captivity can’t help but to find its incarnation over the constant assaults against the prison’s representatives.(more…)

“A contribution to the International Day of Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners”

Many things have been stated about the value of solidarity, and everything has its importance because it contributes to the attempt of giving meaning to a sense that constitutes a vital ingredient for our plans and actions. I will try to state in my own way an existential aspect of solidarity obviously through my own experiences. Solidarity means first of all emotions. Beautiful, wild, but most of all authentic emotions. Emotions that constitute the driving force for the growth of anarchist dynamics, which are liberating and beloved sounds and senses in the city, by yelling slogans, building barricades and by throwing blazing bottles that target the servants of authority. Solidarity doesn’t mean identification, but complicity with everyone that chose to engrave liberating routes in the map of the anarchist insurrection. It’s a relationship and within this relationship experiences are being developed and common desires are being produced for the destruction of this world, not in a vague future, but first of all within ourselves and then around us. Destruction to the degenerated relationships that this world is producing, in its depictions, in its symbols, in its officials and in its loyal servants. (more…)

Revolutionary greetings on this June 11! Solidarity with all Earth warriors and anarchists behind bars!

We are up against a system of power and profit, a system which is destroying the planet and forcing the people into poverty and imprisonment. Many of us who have fought back found ourselves in the crosshairs of an extensive counter-intelligence apparatus who use trumped-up “terrorism” charges and entrapment by informants to put us in prison for years. There are many lessons from each case to consider before engaging in future work, but it is most important that we do not let the seemingly overwhelming forces of domination intimidate us into inaction and passivity.

Even those of us doing time, you know we stay bucking the system, and it brings us strength and inspiration to hear about your work in the streets, to hear about ongoing campaigns – such as the fight to stop the Bureau of Prisons from building a new maximum security federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky, in the middle of a mountaintop removal coal processing area. This is a winnable opportunity highlighting the connections between the prison industrial complex and the exploitation of the Earth by profiteering capitalists.

But to succeed, we must consider the full range of tactics available. Everything from organizing conferences and sending books to prisoners, from lawsuits to protest marches, to hacking websites and sabotaging infrastructure. Every act of defiance counts, even if we do not immediately see the results of our efforts, because even small ripples can make big waves. Local actions have global consequences. We are spreading seeds of revolution, growing wild and free. Until we can overgrow and overthrow this system once and for all!

When I look back on the day of my arrest 20 years ago, I wasn’t imagining what I would have to experience during the next decades of my life.

The first decade they kept me in solitary confinement; since 2007 I’m in population. But I don’t know if or when I’ll get free, because there’s an old law from 1933. Passed by the Nazis on 24 November 1933 – the P.D. law (preventative detention), which allows the state to keep someone in prison for life, without giving him a life sentence. In their theory the P.D. isn’t a sentence – but the P.D. units are still inside regular prisons, inmates living in cells, bars are still at their windows, they’re going into the prison yard and being supervised by prison staff.

What is P.D. for? What are prisons for? Prisons are necrophilic places. There are living people who often have necrophilic attitudes, and there are working people who have necrophilic attitude as well. P.D. and prisons are made for a necrophilic society, for people who often have necrophilic attitudes, and these places are still made by people who have necrophilic attitudes.

A biophilic attitude is the one we’re still fighting for and which is fulfilling our hearts. (more…)

First, I’d like to give warm revolutionary greetings to all those who have shown solidarity and supported me. Without that solidarity and support, I don’t know how I would have survived for so long.

As one who has spent 30 years in U.S. prisons, I’ve become intimately acquainted with control units, whether we call them Security Management Units, Special Housing Units, or Administrative Segregation – all euphemisms of penological sophistication in an attempt to disguise the true purpose and intent of such sinister tools of control and torture. Let’s be clear: they are torture chambers.

Former director of the Bureau of Prisons and now shareholder in the private prison firm GEO, Norman A. Carlson, stated that Marion’s control unit’s purpose is to “control revolutionary attitudes in prison and society” as well. Marion Federal Penitentiary is considered to be the first control unit in the U.S. (more…)

For June 11th, 2015, we emphasized transition in the struggle and in the lives of the prisoners we support. This year we’re focusing on a different kind of transition: the restructuring of the prison system and thus doubling down on opposition to Maximum Security, isolation, and Communications Management Units. High-security facilities are not new: for example, Communications Management Units isolated Daniel McGowan and Andy Stepanian for years. But now we are at a new juncture: there is both a fresh focus on the part of the authorities reorganizing prisons to maximize repression against long-term and combative prisoners, while simultaneously cutting costs. In response there has been a wave of resistance and revolt–in the streets and in the prisons. As this wave spreads organically, we feel impelled to contribute in support of our imprisoned friends and comrades.

Around the world, repression intensifies against anarchists, their comrades, and their families. The left-wing SYRIZA government in Greece continues the isolation of rebellious prisoners in the C-type maximum security prisons. The Spanish state attempts to criminalize anarchist solidarity through an “anti-terrorist” spectacle of raids, arrests, and show trials. Anarchists from Santiago to Kansas City face decades in prison for choosing the path of revolt and for their refusal to bow before pressure from the state. Everywhere we look: the state’s jaws clamp down on rebellion. (more…)

11th June will be a day of international solidarity with Marius Mason and all long term anarchist prisoners, another occasion for dedicating them our time and thoughts and for carrying on the struggle together with them.

This year’s day of international solidarity is entitled “Transition: the struggle is not over“, and is also in support of Eric McDavid, released in January after 9 years of
imprisonment, and of Marius’ gender change.

On the same day the preliminary hearing of the trial against Silvia, Costa and Billy will be held in Turin. The comrades are once again on trial for the events following which they already served years in-prison in Switzerland: the charge of attempted sabotage on the IBM nanotechnology research centre of Zurich. (more…)